Ever the activist, Steinem is in a reflective mode

In this Aug. 9 2011 photo, Gloria Steinem speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in New York. Four decades after she helped found the women's movement, the feminist icon is in a reflective mode, writing a memoir and participating in an HBO documentary on her life. "Gloria: In Her Own Words" premieres Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, on HBO. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
— AP

In this Aug. 9 2011 photo, Gloria Steinem speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in New York. Four decades after she helped found the women's movement, the feminist icon is in a reflective mode, writing a memoir and participating in an HBO documentary on her life. "Gloria: In Her Own Words" premieres Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, on HBO. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
/ AP

She deeply regrets the whole episode. "I could not have made a bigger mistake," she says. "It was personally and professionally a disaster. In the short term it was much harder to get serious assignments, and in the long term it's been used to ridicule me."

Steinem can't escape the Playboy story: Recently she's been asked by many journalists what she thinks of an upcoming NBC period drama about the Playboy Club. For the record: not much, though she hasn't seen it yet. "They were tacky, awful places to work," she says of the clubs. "This will no doubt be a glamorized version."

Steinem also wonders why a TV interviewer recently used precious air time to ask about that long-ago episode. She would rather have been asked about a New York Times op-ed piece she had just written, about a controversial new naval base on Jeju Island off South Korea.

Such an issue may seem off the beaten path for Steinem, but she's long been vocal about a wide range of international issues, like sex trafficking, genital mutilation, or violence against women across the globe. "I'm just not sure I believe in boundaries anymore," she says.

At home, it won't be surprising to see her weigh in on the 2012 presidential race, as she did in 2008 - opposing Sarah Palin ("Wrong Woman, Wrong Message," she titled a column) and decrying what she saw as sexist media treatment of Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom she supported over Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries.

Steinem hopes the current secretary of state might yet become president. "Many more Americans can now imagine a female chief of state, because of her," she says. "After a second Obama term ..."

For the documentary, producers amassed a treasure trove of film clips, photos and other tidbits that tell the story of Steinem's long career.

We see a young Steinem tap-dancing in an elevator - it was one of her talents - and flirting with George Burns in a TV interview. We also see some striking negative reactions to Steinem and her feminism: A vicious call from a female viewer on "Larry King Live," telling her to "rot in hell" and advising her never to have children; or, more recently, conservative host Glenn Beck call her a "cranky feminist" and making a vomit gesture.

There's also news anchor Harry Reasoner predicting that Ms. Magazine, which Steinem co-founded in 1972, would fail (it's still publishing today) and, perhaps most interesting, a segment from the Nixon tapes, with the former president dissing Steinem to Henry Kissinger.

Asked her biggest mistakes, Steinem replies with a laugh: "How much time do we have?" Turning serious, she mentions her father. She did not travel to California to see him in the hospital after a car accident, and he died alone.

"I had taken care of my mom as a child, and I feared I'd never come back," she says.

Steinem also wishes she'd "fought harder" for things she believed in. One of the choices she doesn't regret, however, is not having had children.